Saturday, April 29, 2006

Managed to get Bug, Run3 and Ken down for my 2nd week of MR run....
Very nice weather in the morning...no sun and cooling but the ground was still wet from yesterday rain......we can still the heavy mist at the golf course.
We decided to do one full 10.5km round which is the standard round for MR25 Ultramarathon.
As usual, Bug went off in front...today, he was trying his very beautiful Merrell trail shoes which is new from US.......very light shoes (but still ehavier than my Salomon XA Pro 3D...heee)...
I try to keep pace with run3...and as normal...she went off pretty fast for the start and i got problem catching up.....
We reached the ranger station at about 26:30min which was quite fast for me...as i normally hit there for 27++min running 500m less. took a quick 1min break and went off again...met Sotong along the way
We bash thru the cordoned off area to do the usual route and came into the golf course strongly....Run3 surged ahead and i just maintained my pace....after the killer hill, Run3 startd to slow down a lot....still got a lot of energy on my legs....but still aching from my last interval, i decided to follow her pace behind her back all the way to the end..
Run3 and myself finished our 10.5km run at about 1hr 04min with a pace of about 6:01min/km....a good pace to maintain...normally did 1km at this timing...wow...was really running fast....met mythos and jennifery who just arrived and startd their run.
had a not so good mee siam at the hilltop cafe before we part our ways
I will be back again maybe 2 weeks later....
11150 steps

I have been eyeing this for quite a while. Very interesting piece of device that counts your steps....more interesting with this new model is that it makes use of advanced accelerometer technology which is used in footpod of distance/speed watches like NIKE tailwind, NIKE V10 or Suunto T6....
As such, there is no need to adjust sensitivity unlike other pedometers in the market and also it does not rattles as the rest which makes use of swing pendulum.
Managed to find it hiding behind the pharmacy counter at guardian and got one for myself.......
Very easy to operate device...I just throw it into the pocket and it just works after first 4 sec of continuous walking.
On special features is the aerobic walking recorder which if the user was walking for more than 10 minutes of 60 steps per minute, these steps will be counted as aerobic steps.....
unfortunately, there is no start and stop so i have to record the start steps of aerobic at the start of the run and know the steps at the end and see the differences multiply by the stride length to get the distance...
but still.....a cheaper alternative to distance measurement sport computers from NIKE or POLAR......

Friday, April 28, 2006

managed to reached Hougang Stadium 7pm as planned...however, din managed to catch anyone of them...i guess, all stuck on the road...met teelee who just started to train full time for AHM....patrick came cycling down from his home minutes later and we found other 2 new guys already running around......we went ahead for our warm ups and kickjazz with nemo manged to reached at about 7.30pm.......surprised guest from the North: James came to calibrate his foot pod and Fat Bom Bom appeared from no where to support us with ice cold 100plus!!! thanks buddy!!
We did 6x400m....this time round, I was able to do a much better pacing than my last one with the ironmen which I punctured after my 5th. At least this time, I was able to start slower and ended the 6th one strongly........good company to train with....we had a good dinner at nearby coffeeshop before we head home at 10pm.....
Shoes: Mizuno Wave Rider 8
Distance: 2.4km total
Time taken: 8:56min total run time
Pace: 3:43min/km
Intervals details:
400m for 1:34min@3:55min/km
1:31min rest
400m for 1:35min@3:58min/km
1:32min rest
400m for 1:32min@3:53min/km
1:32min rest
400m for 1:28min@3:40min/km
1:31min rest
400m for 1:25min@3:33min/km
1:39min rest
400m for 1:22min@3:25min/km

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Now is the time of the year when the sun rises early......6:30am at the reservoir..is already not total darkness....rays of lights from the rising sun can be seen at the far sky....
It has been a few weeks ever since I did a morning run ...and at bedok reservoir catching the sunrise......
It was a cool morning and the reservoir is already filled with runners, joggers and walkers....feeling wierd after few weeks of not running on this surface....did a slow easy one for the first run.......but the body does not seems to warm up easily...hit the end of 1st lap by the usually 23++min......
suddenly, there is this man in black came out from the pavement in front of me going at a very quick pace....he looked to be running very efficiently and relax despite his attire...he was wearing a black tee with a black trackpants with his windbreaker tied at his waist....a big waist pouch was also hanging on his backside bouncing up and down.....the sound of coins and keys in the pouch was pretty loud...he was on his earphones...must be listening to some heavy music from the riddle of his strides.....
I caught up with him steadily and tried to overtook him....but i found the pace a bit too nice to follow and ran along side for the next kilometer...he began to pick up his pace..then i realised he is near the end of his run so i let him go.....i guess, we must be running at sub-5min or even near to 4:30min/km pace.......i slowed down to recover after i let him go and struggled back to the end with a good timing......managed to do an astonishing sub-5min/km for the last lap of 4.3km....wow...no wonder i almost vomitted after i ended.......a good run this morning....just hope i am able to maintain the consistency of at least 3 runs per week..and i should be good for AHM in end aug.
Shoes: Mizuno wave Rider 8
Distance: 8.6km
Pace: 5:13min/km
Time Taken: 44:52min
laps:
2.4km for 13:19min@5:33min/km
1.9km for 10:22min@5:27min/km
2.4km for 11:40min@4:52min/km
1.9km for 09:29min@4:59min/km
8 chinups

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

reached home at about 8pm....the ground is still wet from the rain hours ago....decided to go for a cooling exploration run at pungol....
wore my nimbus for the run this time....headed up to punggol from on exit and ran the whole length of punggol to the other exit back to sengkang before heading down to the canal along buangkok drive and back.
quite a comfortable pace i did and hope to start and ramp a bit more runs this
week.
Shoes: Asics Nimbus VII
Distance: 9km
Pace: 5:34min/km
Time Taken: 50:34min
laps:
2.5km for 14:58min@5:59min/km
2.8km for 15:55min@5:41min/km
1.4km for 06:51min@4:54min/km
2.3km for 12:48min@5:34min/km

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Finally get to go back to nature for a little run on a wonderful sat morning....back to where I startd whe i kicked off my wild running hobby 2 years back.....decided to go back to my basic 9.5km run at macritchie....
I have not been running consistently and the most twice a week run only for the past 3 weeks...which is not a good sign.....fitness have been dropping and luckily not very much....
arrived at macritchie at about 8am and found a big crowd preparing for a charity walkathon...waited 10min for Mark to arrive before the started off the run comfortably....The rest of the kakis are either patohing overseas or busy with their stuff.....but at least I managed to get one down to have a good run with.....we reached the landslide blocked off area and decided to do a longer detour route.....
As I was running the trails..i could felt the strain coming in at the golf course...look like i need more MR runs in coming weeks...
We finished off the ran of about 10km for 1hrs 5min which is faster than we expected...and I think I will have to head down here for a run at least for the next 4 weeks......we had a washed up and went of to UTR for Mac breakfast before we went back home for a good rest

Thursday, April 20, 2006

I have been busy busy....no time to run and blog...so i am eating a bit of snake here to do this
Finally after abt 4 months...i finally took my new little red running shoes out for a run.
The first feeling on this shoes is that it is narrow....but after the run, the shoes breaks in and it fit nicel around my feet....
Second major feeling is I was like wearing high heels...the cushioning at the heel is thick and higher making the eleveation from toes to heel very significant...i dun feel so much when i wearing nimbus, cumulus or wave rider 8
3rd...very nive weight to run with...pretty light for a thick cushioning shoes like this...
Overall...good for heel striker but not so good for forefoot lander like me....feeling a bit of archilles strain like when i wore nimbus for the first time....
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Came home late last night and decided to go for a run....after no exercising for 4-5days...my body started to feel weak....
So I decided to explore new running routes.....i have planned a 6.5km route from sengkang to buangkok to jalan kayu to fernvale and back to the start point....a nice route with a little slopes along the way.... i have to run beside the road and have to endure the carbon monoxide also....
But it was a overall nice little run which i think i went a bit too fast thru out....but managed to struggle and finished it comfortably
Shoes: NIKE Air Pegasus 2005
Distance: 6.5km
Pace: 5:13min/km
Time Taken: 33:53min
laps:
1.2km for 06:22min@5:18min/km
1.9km for 10:01min@5:16min/km
1.5km for 07:33min@5:02min/km
1.9km for 09:56min@5:14min/km

Monday, April 10, 2006

thanks renoh for this map
woke up at 5am in the morning due to the heavy splashing of thunderstorms.....supposed to be pickup by alvin at 6.15am...not so sure...from past days experience, the rain should stop and the sun should be out by 7am...so i continued to prepare and wait for alvin to arrive.
after picking up meteor, alvin drove us down to SMU...we are the first to arrived and we thought the turn out for this run will be bad......but brokie's car came after us with bee and cosmic....and more and more vehicles and runners arrived...in the end, we got a huge turnout of about 25 runners....
renoh and brokie led the run and we went thru botanic garden -> minden road -> tanglin mall -> orchard road -> istana -> upper bukit timah road -> newton -> back to smu....
a total of about 16km according to polar for pod for about 1hrs 58min including water, toilet and photo taking stops.......
a good long and easy run for me...defintiely my longest so far this year.....
cheers to sgrunners

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

my life have been very busy recently....weekends are full of physical activities and lack of sleep such that every monday will be body full of aches and tiredness. Originally, I plan to join the ironmen for 8x800m intervals at tampines stadium....but the weather was very bad and thunderstorms have occupied the whole late afternoon and evening...the run was eventually cancelled...and i continue to struggle with work in the office till abt 9pm.I decided to head for the reservoir this morning to meet the sunrise again.....the sky was still dark but full of stars when i started...i guess, all the clouds have fallen during teh heavy rain the day before.....and the sun came out bright and strong.....what a beautiful sunrise to start the day with......not feeling very natural during teh run ...guess because my last run was 4 days back....but still struggled to do below 22min during my second round...
Should be heading for running labs this thursday for Nike shoes trial....
Shoes: Mizuno wave Rider 8
Distance: 8.6km
Pace: 5:22min/km
Time Taken: 46:13min
laps:
2.4km for 13:50min@5:46min/km 1.9km for 10:38min@5:36min/km 2.4km for 12:11min@5:05min/km 1.9km for 09:31min@5:01min/km
8 chinups